A Shark as a Jet and a Jet as a Shark
by Bigvoicesmallpackage
Summary: The night of the rumble, Bernardo and Riff swap bodies. Meaning they have to struggle to conceal who they truly are. What happens when four people find out? How does it all end? Please read and review!   Not slash  changed pen name
1. How it all started

A Shark as a Jet and a Jet as a Shark

A/N: Hey everybody, this is my first ever fanfic, so i hope you like it.

Disclaimer: I love west side story and all, but I only own the plot.

I flicked open my knife and stared across the circle at the jet leader. We started rotating in a circle, but suddenly I heard the weirdest thing: a voice, a girls voice, she sounded like Anita. _Don't do it Bernardo. _

Across the circle Riff had started, I could tell he had heard it as well. But it had almost felt like she was in my head.

"What is it American? You turning chicken too?" I asked him.

"Thought I heard the cops." Riff replied smoothly. "

We continued to rotate, to plan out our strategies. To be honest, i don't want to be a killer, even if he is a racist jet, but i'm only 19, technically still a kid. I could have a nice life ahead of me, if these americans would realize that we Puerto ricans are people too, just as good as them. I shouldn't have pulled out the knife in the first place. Then i wouldn't be in this kill or be killed situation. But I had taunted the polack and called him a chicken a few minutes ago, i couldn't back down. I don't want to look like a coward in front of the other sharks.

_So you are still going to do it Bernardo? You are still going to fight him? You will come to regret this._

It happened just as I lunged at Riff, aiming for his arm. I could get out of this by giving him a few slashes. But I missed, and so did he and then… I blacked out.

When I woke up, I could here voices mumbling near me, they weren't very clear yet, but they were growing clearer pretty quickly. As the voices grew louder, I heard one say "You okay Riff?" I sat up and looked around. We were still on the black top under the high way. I didn't answer, they were probably over there in the other group talking to Riff, who had apparently lost consiousness too. I looked at the worried faces of the boys surrounding me, to see that they were the jets.

That didn't make sense. I was Bernardo, a shark, a Puerto Rican. Why would they be leaning over me?

As I got up to get my knife from the ground a few feet away, i looked at the other group and caught a glimpse of someone who looked a lot like me get off the ground and approach his own knife. As we both looked up from the ground with our blades in our hands, our eyes met.

I was looking at my own cold, dark eyes, my own face, my own body.

Slowly, I brought the knife up, in a threatening pose, angling it so that i could see my own face. Riff was staring back at me from the blade, his face as white as a sheet, displaying nothing but shock.

What was going on? I looked just like him, and he looked like me. Had we swapped bodies?

Ai/N: sorry for the cliffy but I need something to keep me going. Please review, constructive and encouraging comments only please! For anyone who read it before, i decided i didn't like some of the writing, so i changed it. I didn't like how malicious they seemed.


	2. Trouble for Riff

A/N: hey guys! Thanks for all your great reviews! To avoid confusion from now on, I'm going to refer to Riff, occupying Bernardo's body as _Bernardo_ and Bernardo, occupying Riff's body, as _Riff._ When characters are talking to them they will be known as their bodies name, no italics. When our main characters are talking to or thinking about the other body swapper, they will be referred to as the person inside the body, unless other people are around. I as the all knowing narrator will refer to them by their real names.

Disclaimer: Does Margarita own west side story? No, I think not. Margarita doesn't even have any lines. (Me=Margarita for school play.)

_Bernardo's_ POV (reminder: actually riff's)

As my body backed away across the blacktop, I grabbed my knife off the ground. This was really weird, I was looking at myself, my skin was darker, and i had a puerto rican accent. As inconspicuously as I could I glanced down at my reflection in my blade as i had seen him do a few seconds ago. The shark leader looked back at me, a shocked look etched on his face from what I could see in it.

It didn't make any sense. Was I in Bernardo's body?

I suddenly realized something: Bernardo and I were back in position to fight each other. The gangs expected it; they wanted the other leader to go down. We had to do it, but we couldn't. We would have to buy time. As we began circling each other again I thought to myself that if we ever got out of this, I'd hug Krupke.

Suddenly, sirens started blaring; we could hear the policemen's shouts. I turned back to the sharks, who had already started running. Across the way, the jets were also running at top speed. I glanced at myself, mouthed "Doc's, we need to talk" he gave the tiniest of nods and ran after my gang.

* * *

><p>Completely out of breath I half walked half jogged over to the outside cellar door of Doc's drug store. Bernardo as me was likely to get here first, so it was probably safer to go in through the back. Rival gang leaders don't usually meet alone in a basement.<p>

It was over here that I had convinced Tony to go to the dance where I had challenged Bernardo. Now, I wasn't likely to be talking to Tony as a friend for a while now. He was a former jet, I was a jet stuck in a sharks body. After trying to get the door to open several times by various means, I knocked. The door was pulled open, and to my great relief, my body was on the other side. I walked in, and he locked it behind me.

"How'd you get past Doc?" I started at the puerto rican accent coming out of my mouth, that was going to take a little getting used to.

" Told him I was being chased by the sharks and couldn't find the other jets. He put me down here to hide. " He answered.

"I would never do that. I'd kick their immigrant butts so hard they'ed go back where the came from."

He shrugged. "Excuses are a little harder to think of when you just had the most shocking experience of your life."

There was silence for a moment, then I asked; "Did you hear it too? The voice?"

"Yes…"

Another minute of silence passed.

"This is all your fault Lortan." Bernardo said suddenly, pinning me against the wall.

"My fault? How is this my fault Nunez? Its not like I made this happen. Or like i'd even WANT to make it happen." I replied, pushing him off of me.

"That rumble was your idea in the first place, Spic." He shot back.

"it's not my fault that voice decided to bust into it. and don't call me that"

Another moment of silence.

"Where do you live?" He asked abruptly.

"Why do you want to— oh, right, 426 Cinder Street, same house as Tony and his Mom. They sort of adopted me after my uncle kicked me out. You?"

Grays drive, I'm in apartment 494 with my parents, my sister Maria, and oh no…"

He trailed off looking really worried. Which was really strange, considering I was looking at a face I usually only see in the mirror.

"What?" I asked him urgently. This couldn't be good.

"Anita and I were planning to um… get together privately tonight."

"Wait you mean, in a bedroom?"

He nodded looking paler than before.

"I will not do that with a spic, even if I am one! Or look like one, or what ever!" I protested,

"I don't even want you to. Just do your best to think up an excuse, failing that, escape the house for the night."

"And do what?"

"i dont know, get used to shark territory, learn the shark's names, something like that."

Yet another awkward moment of silence until I realized another big problem.

"'Nardo, I don't speak any Spanish… What if they start jabbering away at me?"

He shrugged

Guess what came next? Yep, another minute or two of silence.

Then voices came from upstairs, though we couldn't hear what they were saying. The door creaked open, and Baby John, Arab, and Diesels voices could be heard.

"Crap…"I muttered, fumbling with the door for a second before he pushed me out of the way and unlocked it. Just as I closed the door, I could hear the aforementioned Jets talking to Bernardo, who they thought was me.

This was going to be a long night…

A/N: Well, I'm not entirely happy with it, but its something. I wish I was better at making the PRs less fluent without making them sound stupid, but I'm not, so I cut any of the English difficulties any of them might have. Hope you enjoyed it. please review.


	3. Jets Jumping a Jet

Warning: rough draft! if you don't think i should consider it that, tell me, but until then, this is my rough draft. i felt the need to get something up, so this is it. i had a serious case of writers block.

A/N: Hello again guys! Thanks for the reviews! This is the first chapter that were going to see some action from the gangs, and also the first time I've tried to write action like this, so many apologies if it turns out terrible.

Disclaimer: I don't own west side story in any way, shape, or form. I don't even have the script now that the school plays over.

Riff's POV

I awoke to see a PR girl standing over me, holding a pillow and whacking me with it. Hard. At first I was confused; a PR in Tony's house? There had been Bernardo's sister of course, but Bernardo had made it clear to her not to see Tony; so why would she be here?

Bernardo…

It all came flooding back to me; last night was the Rumble, I was stuck in Bernardo's body, and his girl friend was insanely mad at me for reasons I'd rather not get into right now.

"Stop…" I moaned at Maria in Bernardo's heavily PR accented voice.

She hit me harder with the pillow.

" 'Nardo, you really hurt Anita's feelings last night! She thinks you don't like her any more, go apologize."

Unfortunately, all of this was said in very rapid Spanish, so I didn't understand a word of it.

I sat up on the couch I had slept on.

"I'm going for a walk, see you around lunch."

She gaped at me in disbelief for a moment, then spoke in english.

" You _really _hurt her feelings last night, you should go apologize, now."

" I had a bad night last night Maria, I wasn't in the mood." With that, I walked out the door, intending to find the real Bernardo and find out if his first night as a Jet went any better than my first night as a Shark.

Bernardo's POV

This was going to be fantastic, I thought to myself as I walked down the street, closely followed by a few members of the Jets: Diesel, Snowboy, Action, Baby John, and (to the gangs surprise) Anybodies. The pesky little girl who had been begging me all morning to let her join the gang. I hadn't, but I had let her come along for the day.

Though I was excited to pull this off, I wasn't sure it was smart. He was bound to retaliate some how. But I couldn't help but give him a taste of revenge.

We had reached the edge of Jet territory. A block away, Riff emerged from my apartment building. He turned away from us into the alley next to the building. I told the jets what to do, and that I would meet them from the other side with the other five. It was a lie. I didn't want to have to participate in jumping my own body.

Riff's POV

I sighed as I walked down the alleyway next to Bernardo's apartment building. I had hoped this would reverse itself overnight, or that this had all been a very bad dream, or a hallucination, or even something similar to a bucket of ice water to the face, shocking, but not lasting long. Half way down the alley, I heard footsteps. I whipped around to see four jets and a pest standing there, blocking my way out of the alley. They all had a glint in their eyes that I knew meant they were up to no good.

"Hey spic!"

I turned around the other way to see five more jets blocking the other way out. It was the same strategy we had used to jump Bernardo the first day he was here. Nothing in the alley was good for climbing out, which left running through them. As they began to close in, taunting me, I debated which side to try to break through. Baby john and Anybodies were on one side, and they were certainly the weakest, but diesel was on that side too. On the other side, every one was roughly the same size, with no particularly big or talented fighters, but no one was younger or weaker on that side either. I opted for the space between Anybodies and Snowboy. Baby John was on the other side of the line.

Running at them, I suddenly felt someone grab my collar from behind and throw me to the ground. They pinned me in place, and one of them kicked my face. In a burst of pain, Bernardo's nose broke. I struggled against them, but it was one against ten. They began pummeling me.

"Sharks!" I cried in complete despair. I couldn't believe this, I was being beaten up by my own gang, my brothers.

I never thought I'd be thankful for this, but the sharks came, one stuck his head out of a window above and got more. They ripped the Jets off of me and I sat up, feeling slightly guilty that I had set the sharks on my own gang. Baby John was being beaten badly by a much bigger shark. I longed to dig him out of that hole as I had many time before, but as Bernardo, I couldn't. Fortunately, Diesel came to his rescue.

I looked around, wondering if Bernardo had shown up. He wasn't here, but I had no doubt he had planned this. The situation was too much like what we had pulled on him to be a coincedence. As quickly as I could, I ran off, unnoticed by the two gangs.

Bernardo's POV

"Geez Riff, who did that?" I taunted him, feeling slightly nauseas about my broken nose. That wasn't the kind of damage I was hoping for.

He glared at me, which was really weird feeling, since I was looking at my own face. "You know perfectly well who did this, Nunez. I think I'm going to let your nose set in the worst way possible."

We were at the end of another alleyway. I was sitting on a wall a few feet above him, just out of his reach. He clutched at my nose, trying to figure out how to get it to set.

" Were already even Lorton, you did that to me on my first day. Besides, that was technically me that just got beaten up, not you." I reminded him.

"You thought I'd settle for EVEN? " he asked incredulously. "When has either of us ever settled for even?"

It was true, Even wasn't a word to live by when it came to the Jets and Sharks.

"We haven't Riff, but-" i tried to think up some sort of compensation. "My face is going to be wearing a bandage over my nose for the next few weeks, isn't that enough?

He frowned thoughtfully. "No, maybe I'll dump Anita."

"Don't you dare! That's not the same kind of punishment." I reminded him desperately.

"True. I'll think of something."

He turned around a walked off, leaving me praying he wouldn't act on that last threat.

A/N: And there you have it, Chapter Three. I don't know if Bernardo's plan was really logical for the situation, the sharks would probably be able to over take riff in his own body if he was alone. The last argument seems a little OoC, but it's been a while since I last watched the movie, so the characters are largely based on my school plays perception of them. I'll come back and change it after watching the movie again if my readers think I should. Just tell me in a review please!

(Also, I was wondering about this: when the jets jumped the real Bernardo, was it planned or was it more "look there's a spic on his own, were racist, lets go get him!"The second seems more logical some how, but I don't know, does anyone have any thoughts?)


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